Existing digital rights management (DRM) technologies for premium protected content (hereinafter, “source content”) generally require a user to obtain a license to the entirety of the source content before it may be consumed. As a result, users wishing to view only a selected portion of the source content may be unable to do so without obtaining a license to the source content as a whole. This is particularly prevalent in “pay-per-view” movie DRM schemes, which may require a user to pay the price for the full length of a movie, even if the user only wishes to view a selected portion of that movie.
For the foregoing reason many existing DRM technologies do not easily support “fair-use” practices for content sharing use cases, e.g., where relatively small segments of source content may be shared/displayed without a license from the content owner. This is in part due to the fact that many existing DRM technologies encrypt or otherwise protect source content as a whole with a single content encryption key. This may hinder or prevent a user from sharing a segment of the source content unless he/she obtains the content encryption key, which as noted above often requires a license to the source content as a whole.
With the above in mind interest has grown tremendously in the production of diverse content, e.g., content such as audio and/or video media that is the product of contributions from multiple sources. Diverse content may include, for example, a movie that includes a first content segment produced by a first contributor (or group of contributors) and a second content segment that is produced by a second contributor (or group of contributors). In instances where the diverse content is in the form of a “mashup,” the first and second content segments may be derived from different source content (i.e., first source content and second source content, respectively), after which they may be combined by a mashup artist in a desired manner to form the mashup.
While diverse content such as content mashups can be highly entertaining, existing DRM technologies may not easily support their production for the same reasons noted above. For example, existing DRM technologies may require a mashup artist and mashup consumers to obtain a license to the entirety of the source content for each content segment that is to be included in the mashup. This can present a cumbersome and potentially expensive user experience, particularly if the content segments the mashup artist wants to use are relatively small/short, as compared to their corresponding source content.
In addition many content display technologies may support the ability to track user behavior with regard to content that is being consumed on a device. For example, content display technologies can track data regarding user viewing behavior (e.g., fast forwarding, rewinding, number of views, etc.), and provide that data to a content owner, e.g., in the form of metadata. Although such technologies can be effective to track user behavior with regard to a piece of content as a whole, they may be unable to track user behavior with regard to individual content segments in a piece of diverse content such as a content mashup.
Although the following detailed description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.